'Satisfaction' Doesn't Live Up To Its Name

August 26, 1987|By Reviewed by Laura Stewart Dishman of The Sentinel Staff

A lot of adjectives apply to Rae Lawrence's energetic first novel, Satisfaction. But satisfying isn't one of them.

In this '80s version of Mary McCarthy's memorable The Group, four women meet during freshman week at Radcliffe. Even before we learn their names, we're told that the four are the daughters of four of the most famous men in America. We're also quickly given a few other details -- the color of their hair, the size of their wardrobes and the urgency of their ambitions.

We learn what music they listen to and who snags the most closet space. We're told which ones men want to pick up -- and which allow themselves to be picked up. As the pages turn and the years fly novelistically by, we watch marriages being made and broken, babies welcomed and avoided and the need for closets -- and drugs, and men, and ever more money -- steadily growing. We see, in short, the outline of what appears at first to be real, if glittering, life.

But we're never given reasons for the behavior of the oddly matched foursome, who seem more like unresolved fragments of a single personality than distinct individuals.

Why, if shy and incredibly wealthy Rosaline loves Schuyler, the sensitive man from Montana, does she end her relationship the instant she finds him and dynamic December in a compromising position? Surely the sort of well-bred, articulate, intelligent woman Lawrence has tried to create would give her lover a chance to explain himself.

Why, if December is really a passionate but good person, would she ever have gotten herself into such a position with her best friend's lover? Why would Marinda, driven daughter of a New Jersey Mafia boss, carry a torch for Schuyler for many years, then suddenly develop a live-in relationship with a fellow law-school student who is so obviously offensive?

Why would chirpy, heart-of-stone Southern belle Katie Lee force herself on Marinda's cousin, manipulating him into marriage and then bludgeoning his feelings while she devotes herself to her career? Why, after all the anguish these four creatures inflict on each other and their loved ones, do they end up standing together in a sisterly fashion, at yet another wedding?

And why, most of all, do we care enough to ask and answer these questions? The answer is simple: Lawrence is a good storyteller and her topic is irresistible.

But Lawrence is not a logical planner, and the absence of believable situations, motivations and characterizations makes Satisfaction impossible to take seriously.

It's a simple story, built around the relationships the four women have with one man, and Lawrence makes the most of her approach.

Her accounts of parties, apartments, outfits, conversations and even such arcane matters as horse-racing and alcoholism are well-researched. She vividly captures the feeling of a succession of chaotic eras and she keeps the pace moving briskly. What she fails to do, however, is convince us that it really could have happened.

That's fatal for any escapist fiction. The reader needs to be seduced into seeing -- really seeing -- the bright green eyes that could sway a mousy, faithful wife, or the rage of a mother deprived of her child by a woman she thought was her friend. The reader needs to know that something beyond a handsome man -- and the author's need for a workable plot --

binds the four stars of Lawrence's book into a permanent constellation.